Ad Network Not Paying Up

Rev. DOG. writes: "According to Lowtax at Something Awful, the now defunct GameFan Network, bought out by Express.com a while back has sent a letter to their sites saying that they won't pay them a dime, because the bulk of the banner ads served up were for GameFan/Express or hosted sites. Apparently, during Lowtax's stay there, they wouldn't let him take any non-GameFan advertising. Anyway, it's all at the 10-9-00 article on the front page at SA, especially warning others on other banner-ad networks that they may be next." I'm not knocking on Gamefan/Express as much as this is a good example of /always/ read the fine print. Read it again. Have a lawyer read it. When I was selling the ads on here, there were a couple times that people tried to screw us over - so be prepared.

Comments

The Tool Behind Gamefan

[Talisman]

His name is Nick Fisher. He lives in Minnesota and plays with his dad's money, which he desperately wants everyone to believe is his, and that he earned it all from scratch. I swear this guy was the valedictorian of the Elmer Fudd School of Self-Esteem. "My name is Nick Fisher. I am a millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht."

I had the misfortune of making his acquaintance about 5 years ago in the online game SubSpace. I was pretty active in the SubSpace community and was witness to countless incidents where he proved what a prick he is. He did things ranging from getting people banned from the game even when they had done nothing wrong, to ping flooding individuals during League matches so that his squad would win. He pulled the same stunt on one of the more popular Quake servers and was cold busted by the guy that ran it. He had about a 60-page ping log, all coming from Nick Fisher's IP address.

Anyway, to anyone who has ever met this jackass, this type of behavior comes as no surprise. Download SubSpace and see for yourself. Go into any zone, ask about 'trixter' (his rather fitting online name) and the Gamefan debacle. You'll get an earful. He still plays rather frequently, so you may even get the chance to tell him how you feel in person. (SubSpace only runs on Windows. Sorry.)


Talisman

Gaming Sites and $$$

[Dark Paladin]

I run a gaming site - granted, not a popular one, but that doesn't hurt my feelings any. And advertisements is something that any site has to deal with.

The problem I see with the whole Express.com/Gamefan Network thing isn't a legal thing, but a right thing. Sure, the legal thing for them to do is to cut their losses, don't pay the sites, and keep the corporation going.

Then there's the right thing to do. In the case of Something Awful, the guy's out $3000 in server costs because he's not going to get paid. I think more about the case of VoodooExtreme.com, which was probably getting a few million hits a day - and evidently they are owed $100,000 that they're never going to see.

These are folks who had an agreement, that they would run their site, bring in traffic, and have ads up for the "parent company" - and in return they would recieve money to keep it going. In the case of some of these sites, people have probably quit their day jobs because they had enough money coming in (or promised to come in) to take care of them.

Yeah, Express.com doesn't have to pay them. But if they don't, you can bet that they're not getting another $0.02 out of me. I'll buy my anime and import stuff somewhere else. (Damn, and I had my eye on those Final Fantasy Selphie figurines).

Do the right thing, Express.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel